31 October 2016

Tim Halliday works as a
performance technician in the Faculty of Arts, Science and Technology at the
University of Northampton. With the support from Northampton’s hotly-tipped
OhBoy!, and Brighton three-piece Broadbay, the university has organized a
benefit concert for our Rock School, and the foremost thanks goes to Tim
Halliday, who initiated the event.

The concert was held in Northampton’s
Picturedrome venue on 22nd of October, and has achieved to raise 1,245
pounds for Mitrovica Rock School. Part of it will be spent on a microKorg keyboard to be used by both branches, and the rest will serve for organizing inter-ethnic workshops.

Tim’s involvement with the
rock school started when he visited Kosovo in order to document a University of
Northampton initiative being run for young people here.

He has expressed how proud
he is of Northampton for making this event a great success, saying:

26 October 2016

Ronald Seerden is a guitar teacher and a band coach at
the Rock Academy in Tilburg, Netherlands since 2000. Besides that, he is also a
freelance musician, playing as a sideman for several Dutch artists. Our
students had the pleasure of meeting him for the first time at Skopje Summer
School 2013, when he had the role of a judge who would decide which band
deserved which place, as the concert performance was viewed as a competition
between the bands that year. This time around, we had a chance to get to know
him better through his lecture on band coaching, and he also coached our mixed
bands on their rehearsals.

Ronald has expressed that his workshop is more of an
experience-sharing rather than a basic lecture, which it was, and that was very
valuable for the group to learn about his teaching methods and get an insight
into his work as a Rock Academy teacher. He spoke about his methods on testing
the musicality of the students, making them feel comfortable in class,
encouraging and inspiring them, being their friend while maintaining the
authority, etc. Also, he had a chance to show his methods by
coaching our mixed bands, and they have expressed how successful their
rehearsals went and how much Ronald’s help means to them.

14 October 2016

These last few weeks were mostly all about workshops for
our students and trainee teachers. We’ve had workshops for drums, bass, keys, etc.,
where the students had a chance to really expand their existing knowledge and
take their creativity to a new level. For the first time, teachers are working at both branches so they can share their knowledge where it's most needed. Sometimes they work one-on-one, sometimes in small groups. Teachers work hard to develop interesting lesson material that isn't covered in the general lesson program, to make sure these sessions are productive. Here's a glance at one of the drum workshops:

6 October 2016

Hotel Gracanica has welcomed us again, but this time for
a live acoustic gig of our two mixed bands – Sublime 6 and Akasha. The weather
was in our favor, so the stage was set up in their beautiful garden near the
swimming pool.

Besides the Mitrovica Rock School team, the audience consisted of hotel guests and people who came out especially for the concert, who gave our mixed bands a very warm reception. But the gig was not the only thing planned for our bands – they also shot music videos with Kiklop Kikloparium and Goran Jolovic (the same team that did the music videos of Proximity Mine and High Frequency in August) and gave radio interviews for BBC World Service and Ernst-Ludwig v. Aster of German public radio. As always, our bands were professional with the gig as well as giving interviews.

After the dinner, everyone was safely transported back to
Mitrovica. There are more activities planned for our bands, so stay tuned to
find out what happens next!

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Southeast Europe's first rock music school

The Mitrovica Rock School restores rock music culture to the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica, Kosovo. Local musicians teach the city’s future rock stars. Throughout the region, the Mitrovica Rock School is known as an example of a new way to bridge cultural differences.